1. Marriage ANTH 321: Kinship and Social Organization
Kimberly Porter Martin, PH.D.

2. What Is a Family?
A family is a group of people who are connected to one another by consanguineal, affinal or fictive kin ties.

3. Types of Kin Ties
Consanguineal ties = ties established by birth/descent from a common ancestor
Affinal ties = ties established by marriage
Fictive kin ties = ties that mimic consanguineal or affinal ties where no such tie exists

4. Aspects of Marriage Who chooses marriage partners?
What is the basis for selecting partners?
What kind of contract exists between families?
How many spouses are involved in given family?
Where does a couple usually go to live after marriage?
What kind of household form is the norm?

5. Who Chooses Marriage Partners?
Fathers
Males in the family
Parents
Family members including siblings
Personal choice
Sometimes with rights of refusal for bride and/or groom

6. Marriage Contract
Bride Price/Wealth – groom’s family gives goods/animals to bride’s family to show his ability to provide and to compensate them for the loss of their daughter’s labor
Suitor Service – groom works for the brides family (usually hunting in a foraging society) to demonstrate his ability to provide and to compensate for the loss of the daughter’s labor
Dowry – bride’s family offers goods that come with the bride into the marriage to make her more desirable as a marriage partner. Sometimes bride controls the goods, sometimes they become the property of the groom.

7. Types of Marriage Contracts
Female Husbands A0DIL6DkZE
Masai Tribal Customs
Brideprice in Uganda (What Price Brideprice?)
Dowry in Greece
Dowry in India

8. What Is Exogamy?
Exogamy is marriage outside a defined group of people.
The most common form of exogamy is the universal incest taboo, that requires people to marry outside their nuclear family.
There are also a variety of ways of extending the universal incest taboo, including
lineage/clan exogamy,
village/band exogamy

9. What Is Endogamy?
Endogamy is marriage within a defined group of people. Requirements to marry someone of the same ethnic group, religion, educational level or socioeconomic status are examples of endogamy

10. Incest
Limitations on whom one can marry and with whom one can have sex.
The limitations vary from one culture to another.
Limitations frequently contradict one another from one society to another.
Universal incest taboo = prohibitions on sex and marriage with nuclear family members.

11. Explanations for the Universality of the Universal Incest Taboo
Biological Explanations
Genetic inbreeding
Psychological Explanations
Freudian Oedipal Avoidance
Westermarck Effect = Avoidance on the part of individuals reared together
Sociocultural Explanations
Sexual Conflict Reduction
Role Theory
Alliance Theory

12. Genetic Inbreeding Avoidance
The “Gene” is a culture bound concept.
Dominant mutations will show up regardless of mating patterns; only recessive mutations will be affected by mating.
Depends on the belief that both parents contribute to the conception process.
Mutations occur at a rate of about 1 mil to 1, and therefore deleterious genes will be VERY rare.
Most mutations will be lethal and a lethal mutation will result in a miscarriage.
World view/cosmology beliefs will provide alternative explanations for why an infant has a birth defect.

13. Freud and the Oedipal Complex
Boys are sexually attracted to their mothers.
Boys resent and are jealous of their father’s sexual access to their mothers.
Boys also love their fathers and need their fathers love, creating a love/hate relationship.
Boys dream about conflict with their fathers, including murdering their fathers to gain sexual access to their mothers.
Normal, healthy development demands that boys resolve their jealousy and aggressive feelings toward their fathers, and give up sexual fantasies about their mothers.

14. Malinowski’s Challenge
Who: Bronislaw Malinowski
Where: The Trobriand Islands
What: A natural experiment
Concepts:
Patrilineality vs Matrilineality
Fathers vs Maternal Uncles
Sexuality vs Authority
Evidence vs Interpretation

15. The Trobriand Islands

16. Malinowski’s Findings
From Sex and Repression in Savage Society
1. Trobrianders are well-adjusted and lacking in obvious “perversions and neuroses.”
Boys reported no sexual dreams about mothers.
Boys reported some sexual dreams about sisters.
There are no Oedipal legends in Trobriand folklore.
Brother-sister incest is a recurring theme in Trobriand folklore.
There is no reported mother-son incest.
Some brother-sister cases of incest are reported.
Boys reported no negative feelings toward fathers or dreams about conflict with fathers; they reported warm, loving relationships.
Boys reported hostility and hostile dreams involving their maternal uncles.

17. Malinowski’s Conclusions
This society shows no evidence that would support the presence of the Oedipal Complex.
The absence of evidence for the Oedipal Complex in Trobriand society means that it cannot be a universal part of human male development.

18. The Westermarck Effect
Individuals will not be sexually attracted to those with whom they are raised as children.
Examples:
Kibbutzim in Israel
Anthropologist Melford Spiro found that of 3,000 marriages within the kibbutz system, only about 15 weddings involved people who were raised in the same group of children and none of these pairs had been raised with their partners before the age of six.
Chinese Shim –Pua Marriage

19. Sociocultural Explanations
Sexual Conflict Reduction
If fathers and sons or brothers fight over sexual rights to mothers and sisters, the family support system would be disrupted.
Role Theory
Incest would confuse the roles people play – father would be brother-in-law, etc.
Alliance Theory
The benefit of alliances with other families and groups creates a safety net that would not be there if incest were practiced.

20. Cousin Marriage Patrilateral cross-cousin marriage
Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage
Patrilateral parallel- cousin marriage
There is no instance of matrilateral parallel-cousin marriage in the ethnographic record.

21. Cross-Cousin Marriage
Patrilateral cross-cousin marriage would require/prefer that Ego marry number 16.
Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage would require/prefer that Ego marry number 24.
Bilateral cross-cousin marriage would require/prefer that Ego marry either number 16 or number 24

22. Parallel Cousin Marriage
Patrilateral parallel cousin marriage would require/prefer that Ego marries number 18.
In no society do we see a requirement/preference that Ego marry his mother’s sister’s daughter (22).

23. Cousin Marriage and Lineage Type

24. Cousin Marriage and Kinship Terminology

25. Cousin Marriage and Iroquois Terminology
WITH POLYGYNY

26. Cousin Marriage and Crow and Omaha Terminology

27. Cousin Marriage and Sudanese Terminology

28. Yanomamo Marriage Lineage Exogamy Bilateral Cross-Cousin Marriage
Sororal Polygyny
Village Endogamy
Yanomamo frequently marry from within their village, with rates of up to 85% endogamy in a given village.

29. Numbers of Spouses in a Family
Monogamy = the marriage of one woman to one man
Polygamy = the marriage of multiple wives OR husbands to a member of the opposite sex (a general term). There are three (3) types:
Polygyny = the marriage of one man to
multiple wives
Polyandry = the marriage of one woman
to multiple husbands
Group Marriage = the marriage of
multiple women to multiple men

30. Example of Polygynous Marriage
This is “Sororal Polygyny”

31. Example of Polyandrous Marriage

32. Household Form
Nuclear Family = a monogamously married couple and their offspring living together in a household.
Centralized Polygynous Family = a man and his multiple wives living together in a family.
Satellite Polygynous Family = Multiple wives of a single man who maintain separate houses for themselves and their children, but work together in domestic tasks
Extended Family = a domestic group consisting of three or more generations of consanguineally and affinally related people.
Group Marriage Family = a domestic unit composed of all of the spouses and offspring of a group marriage.

33. Nuclear Families in a Standard Kinship Diagram?
In the diagram below, all the different nuclear families are shown indifferent colors. Notice that the adults in EGO’s parent’s generation are members of two different nuclear families.

34. Patrilocal Extended Family

35. Matrilocal Extended FamilyOR